charles barrow's writing

This post is an update, a follow-on from my last entry.  So I've spent the month of September focussing on the reading of short stories. Short stories aren't my usual go-to choice of reading material. I don't know why, I think I may be secretly prejudiced against them, which I'll have to spend some time (in therapy) unpacking. I have read some great ones in the past, but I just don't reach for them when I need something to read. That may change now, however, following this exercise. My intention this month was to read as many as I could. I aimed to read 20, because I didn't want to overcommit myself, so I was surprised when I just totted up my list and found I'd read 47, and I'm secretly delighted about that. I also wanted to read widely; work by lots of different authors, some I'd never read before, and in different genres, some I don't usually favour. That kind of happened, but the collections I had in my possession tended to focus on dead, whi...

It's Short Story September- at least it is in my house. I'm getting into the idea of themed reading weeks/months. I'm already geared up for VicTober (Victorian October) next month - I came across the idea on Youtube, where several Booktubers are already talking about it. But more about VicTober in October. This month I'll be diving into these collections. I also have further collections on my Kindle, Murakami's Men Without Women, and Bolu Babalola's Love in Colour particularly peak my interest. I always love the idea of a short story, but don't very often find myself reading one. And since I'm increasingly drawn to writing some more short fiction, I figure I ought to read a whole variety from different genres and time periods, genders, ethnicities and sexualities. These below, skew white and male, though the ebooks balance things out a little, and I intend to visit the library to find a more diverse range of authors that I don't currently have any wo...

I recently discovered a series of books called Everyman's Pocket Classics. Each volume is filled with short stories from a variety of well known authors (current to classic), and is arranged around a theme. Love Stories, Bedtime Stories, Christmas Stories, Cat, Erotic, Dog, Detective, Ghost, Wedding, Motherhood, the list goes on and on. They are handsome books with colourful covers, a stripy spine, and a built-in bookmark. They are hardbacks, but being 'Pocket' editions they come in at the size of a paperback. I like them a lot. My favourite theme is the one that focuses on cities, hence the volumes you see below - yes I realise that Russia is a country. F urther titles include  Berlin, Prague, Florence, and Rome. I've been picking up my copies in second-hand bookshops and paying only a few £££s for each one, which is great value. I love the city of London, it's somewhere I'll be visiting again very soon. I've enjoyed some great stays in Paris, and would lov...

Traditionally, a  drabble  is a piece of fiction that is exactly 100  words long . Thank you Google. I was completely unaware that a drabble was a thing, especially a fiction writing thing. I'd heard of flash-fiction, and micro-fiction to describe short pieces, but not a drabble. Until, that is, I happened upon a Blogger blog, 101fiction, entirely dedicated to the drabble. They run a monthly drabble writing competition - t he prize is publication in their download magazine. They ask for stories of 100 words, and t hey allow only a one word title, hence the 101 of 101fiction, and they set a different theme each month, this month it's Invention . The whole idea intrigued me. I've never tried writing such a short piece of fiction before, and there was something about that title of Invention that was a great writing prompt for me. So, for that past week I've been writing a drabble. I've really enjoyed the process, the constraints that such a small word limit impose...

I just spent an hour in my local library. I usually read novels but I went in to find a short story to read. Any short story. I want to study short story writing, good and bad. Finding time, making time, to sit in a library and read is a surprisingly hard thing to do for some reason. I could of course take books out to read at home but this exercise is about sitting in my local library and reading whichever story I pick out from the rather small selection of volumes that my local library stocks. Perhaps short stories aren't very popular amongst borrowers so the library doesn't stock many titles or, conversely, maybe they are incredibly popular and all out on loan. It's an enjoyable project. I have read a Dickensian whodunnit (Edward Marston), a pulp fiction mystery (Micky Spillane), a sci-fi classic (Ray Bradbury) and a couple of dreadful horror stories - as in horror stories that were dreadfully bad and so I will leave the authors anonymous. There have al...

I took a trip to the zoo. A friend told me it seemed a very retro thing to do, and so it was I suppose. I remember a visit to London Zoo when I was a youngster although, oddly, it's the crowds of people I recall rather than the animals. On this recent visit I was taken with the big cats, as opposed to being taken by the big cats, which is a rather different thing altogether and one which stirred another retro memory. I recently re-read some Ray Bradbury short stories, amongst them a tale called The Veldt. I won't spoil the ending if you haven't read it, but it involves some creepy kids, some far future technology and a pride of lions on the open grasslands of Africa. This story made quite an impression on my young mind that has stayed with me down the years, so it was interesting to return to it recently and discover that, while it had lost some of its power to unsettle it was still enjoyable none-the-less. And thoughts of it returned to me as I strolled around the big...

I'm keen to put John Mann to bed. If you've read either of my published stories then you'll understand that sentence on more than one level. What I'm saying is that I'm impatient to finish this last John Mann story. I want it finished so I can move on to writing other stories. It's been a great experience, one big, long learning experience. And it will, for me, have been a big achievement. A trilogy of self-published stories? I'll be very proud to admit to that. But I've been thinking about what I'll do afterwards. I want to avoid resting on my laurels (whatever they are) for too long, because that period of 'afterwards' could easily stretch from weeks into months or even (whisper it) years of resting, doing nothing. Any hot irons (whatever they are) will be colder than a very long-dead thing. So I've been making plans, sketchy plans, but plans nontheless for more John Mann stories, short stories, follow-up stories, linked stories, preque...